Overall game (respectful) feedback

[Bertram253]

I wanted to give some written feed-back on the open beta here, to see whether I got this game right and maybe also so that Nexon developers maybe read it (Who knows?)

Overall the game has left a strong impression of solid potential to me, while it clearly, I mean clearly, took all its successful game systems from other successful games,
and graphic genre inspiration from graphics inspiration that the community loved at some point.
For instance, you can clearly feel:
- Destiny 2 for the loot dps upgrade evolution, the "heroic public event" style of mission.
- Warframe for the descendants collection style, descendant mod points upgrade, modding system, modding polarization system, material grind and even the crafting mechanics.
- Warframe/Destiny again for the mission styles (warframe more than Destiny). E.g.: control points, go fetch the motes, go there, escort, ...
- Anthem for the graphic/world style, and a bit in the feeling of the weapons.
- Lost ark and its MMORPG family for the repeatable content with level and gates.

Nexon really has done their homework on this one, and if you love(d) any of these games, you'll like First Descendant for some of these systems or of course the gameplay. They may be presented differently but you'll feel right at home.

The graphics while it's still unstable are looking modern and fresh and don't feel too stale compared to the usual UE5 asset store demos. I'll come back on the level design below though.

Also, the organization of the open beta and the updates provided within the beta is per se impressive and very much appreciated. It's weeks of preparation into these kind of big events with a lot of pressure on all the team, so congrats.

I wanted to voice some still small concerns for now but that may make the game lose its savor over time.

- Enemy AI (other than collossus): The enemy are split into standard (red bars), yellow bars and boss (Alla Destiny), when playing solo, the enemy felt right in pressuring you forcing to relocate and use your ability, while being a lot "in your face".

When playing in a group of 2 or 3 though, the AI clearly shows some lacking in the sense that all enemies of the same hierarchy (red bars and yellow bars) won't have distinguishable behavior patterns that can be learned, either because they all feel like doing the same, or because they are destroyed before doing much.
This makes many of the encounter feels the same, only with enemies that have a different skin. The only meaningful difference is enemies that run at you and the ones that don't.

Only the bosses and colossus bring some fresh air here, and since the First Descendant will be a lot on grinding to get the next thing by destroying waves of red bars, I would definitely try to improve that part.
Even the campaign missions as for me suffered from that in term of overall interest and challenge.

As for the level design, everything is beautiful, and I'm pretty sure there is more. Some settings in the intro are incredible. But as for the open beta worlds, they feel interesting but empty. Meaning that you walk from one mission to another without any other interest than that or any other kind of danger, drive or tension. Which means you lose interest in the world exploration very quickly and that is sad.
On the other hand, I'm not asking for (too much) hidden collectibles in the world as it is one of the most boring kind of things you can find in a RPG/MMOFPS, along with fetch quests.
Having random encounter along with a slightly smarter AI that actually tries to ambush you from time to time would keep you on your toes for instance.

The story is fine but fine only for a beta with all due respect for all the hard work done into that. We have good guys and bad guys and while the character design make the character have personality, the story is nothing else than go fetch the powerful artifact before the bad guys.

You can vaguely feel there is more to it than just good guys vs bad guys, you can never truly get a taste of it. I just hope there are good twists waiting for the full game, as I know some are in it for the loot and the power, but most are ok to keep grinding to at least get the story before doing the end game activities.

And here is my segue to end game activities, for now, we have special operation, which serves well for the material grinding and void expedition which serves for loot gating and material transformation.
I'm already sure that special operations will become very boring very quickly, and that the community will just find way to breeze through all that with dot damage and the minimum of actions on their end.
The void expeditions have potential but here again it is a boss battle with a few mechanics, I just hope that true raiding may be a thing someday with an associated long term reward system.
And also solo raid (aka dungeons/legend lost sectors in Destiny) as otherwise, I don't see people stay once they've cleared it.

And last but not least, PVP could be a thing to make people try their character but I agree this should not come half baked.

Network parties is already very cleanly done for a beta, congrats for that, while for the full game, being able to join one's friends wherever they are as long there is space in the team should be a thing.
To go back to Albion to form parties and/or being separated from the party when you rejoin is a time waster and frustrating.

Voila, I hope you'll find this first iteration of feed-back useful, cheers.

[Lorgar (Paarl)]

Thanks men, im downloading it right now on my PS5 and i came here to look for opinions of other people. Very nicely done review, i possibly skiped it somewhere ...how are the microtransaction works in here? U rly would tell me with straight face that nexon didn put shop in beta? xD

[Bertram253]

Thanks :)
You won't see any cash shop in the beta, but everything is setup for the "pay to skip" evergreen micro-transactions to be there.
There are 2 also at least 2 currencies that I'm pretty sure they will monetize.
For how much and how awful will be the grind? On the beta, it's more than bearable but on the real game, who knows?
Actually, more transparency on this would be appreciated.

[Lorgar (Paarl)]

Im playing on PS5 right now, got the mission to kill grave walker, but i guess it may be bugged cause i never connect to match, and when counting stops i need to restart the game ;/

[finnlaaam]

Hello, i mostly agree with your review but:
"when playing solo, the enemy felt right in pressuring you forcing to relocate and use your ability"

My problem is most mission forces you to sit like a duck on an open space, if you relocate you forfeit the objective.
Another problem i have is ammo. Between the previous point and the fact that out of mission the world is empty i have serious ammo problem.
Weapon like shotguns/launcher are unusable.
Currently in the Sterile land and progressing Solo is becoming nearly impossible.

I know coop exist and i accept the not-release state of the game but for now it's a quit moment.

Although, compared to Warframe (didn't played Destiny), the economic model is already very aggresive.

That's just my opinion.

[Flaak]

Well said, I think this game will succeed if they focus on endgame better and something to keep people interesting for a long time..replay ability drop rates etc. Dungeons can be real fun or raids. Bosses to queue for weekly, the usual. I think we level too fast but maybe cause demo. If its grindy it can either turn out like diablo and hated or it can match the game and make it worth it.

Publicado originalmente por finnlaaam:

Hello, i mostly agree with your review but:
"when playing solo, the enemy felt right in pressuring you forcing to relocate and use your ability"

My problem is most mission forces you to sit like a duck on an open space, if you relocate you forfeit the objective.
Another problem i have is ammo. Between the previous point and the fact that out of mission the world is empty i have serious ammo problem.
Weapon like shotguns/launcher are unusable.
Currently in the Sterile land and progressing Solo is becoming nearly impossible.

I know coop exist and i accept the not-release state of the game but for now it's a quit moment.

Although, compared to Warframe (didn't played Destiny), the economic model is already very aggresive.

That's just my opinion.

This is why its in beta though. Im sure things like this will definitely be fixed if people can support the game long enough to do so. But they need that support....

[Bertram253]

The lifelessness of the open zones between missions are been noted across all the review I've seen so far, from being a note to a game breaker, so hopefully they know about it.

Publicado originalmente por finnlaaam:

My problem is most mission forces you to sit like a duck on an open space, if you relocate you forfeit the objective.

Agreed. The game design intentions there is indeed not that great IMHO, and probably they are still trying to figure out their progression path or their intentions in term of challenge progression. The game is clearly making you run, then stop at some place and kill whatever comes to you while staying in a small or big circle. This is ok when it's not always that kind of objective, but in the beta, there is a lot of that.

My biggest concern is that you don't really have the kind of missions where you have to think and relocate wisely to root out enemies, sometimes, the level design is there to partially support that (like higher areas where the enemies spawn) but even then, the AI doesn't make it very interesting. This is a balance that can be fixed though, while it takes some care from the dev team to make each encounter interesting.

For instance, what they do a lot, is to spawn the enemy waves at the exact same locations and with the exact same types of enemies several times in a row. Repetition is definitely not the way to go there IMHO.

[Flaak]

Publicado originalmente por Bertram253:

The lifelessness of the open zones between missions are been noted across all the review I've seen so far, from being a note to a game breaker, so hopefully they know about it.

Publicado originalmente por finnlaaam:

My problem is most mission forces you to sit like a duck on an open space, if you relocate you forfeit the objective.

Agreed. The game design intentions there is indeed not that great IMHO, and probably they are still trying to figure out there progression path or their intentions in term of challenge progression. The game is clearly making you run, then stop at some place and kill whatever comes to you while staying in a small or big circle. This is ok when it's not always that kind of objective, but in the beta, there is a lot of that.

My biggest concern is that you don't really have the kind of missions where you have to think and relocate wisely to root out enemies, sometimes, the level design is there to partially support that (like higher areas where the enemies spawn) but even then, the AI doesn't make it very interesting. This is a balance that can be fixed though, while it takes some care from the dev team to make each encounter interesting.

For instance, what they do a lot, is to spawn the enemy waves at the exact same locations and with the exact same types of enemies several times in a row. Repetition is definitely not the way to go there IMHO.

The game is just a beta. Im sure they havnt implemented all the flesh of everything..so yes we are just doing the main stories which to me looks like they have the option to replay them. Even if its not what you think fun..its always been a good idea to make the story repeatability for different rewards to add to the game. When the story just is story and once you beat it becomes dead content is the first sign of a dead game overall.

[Devilish Dave]

I will share mine too:

Not Meant to be Compared With Destiny.

Maybe In A Few Years...

This is for the BETA version of the game.

Pros:

• The graphics are well done, goes to show what Unreal 5 is capable of and it is most evident during Wold Boss battles, where the entire arena can fall apart, except for the ground.
  
• The world is diverse, each region has it's own touch, from swamps, mountain, deserts and more.
  
• The combat is a lot of fun, especially fighting mobs. Although it does matter what sort of character you pick for yourself, each character comes with their perks. Not every character is suitable for everyone. Some are more challenging than others and some offer abilities which are subjective to being better.
  
• Voice acting is not as engaging, but most of the time you are following the story and immersed in combat to really pay attention to any of that. The cinematics on the other hand are really good and it is still enjoyable to watch regardless.
  
• The visual customizations are ok, despite it being heavily monetized. Nevertheless, you are able to further change the colours of your cosmetics, if you happen to buy a new look. Colours can be unlocked by doing missions and buy purchasing them. There are two sorts of colours, one for weapons and one for descendants.
  
• The characters are designed nicely. They each have their personality which you can hear as you play the game, during the BETA you don't really see much interaction among them in cutscenes, but perhaps the main game will offer this.
  
• I will revisit this when the game is officially launched to make the correct changes.

Cons:

• There are some connection instabilities, where some will get thrown from the game. This has never happened to me, but I have multiple times, become stuck when transitioning from one area of the world to another.
  
• Matchmaking as with most team-based game is atrocious, as there are no requirements needed in terms of levels. So new/weak players, tend to burden those who are more experienced and trying to progress. This opens the door for lazy players to try and piggyback off others, in order to advance in the game.
  
• I will revisit this when the game is officially launched to make the correct changes.

Verdict:[7.5/10]

Despite the game currently being in BETA, it is a pretty decent looter-shooter.
Not at the level of Destiny yet, but if it gets enough years as Destiny, I can see it compete with it.
The graphics are nice and the cinematics for the storyline are very well created.

I've been playing this game on a controller, which was easy to get the hang of.
They have a grappling feature which was improved since the last beta, it is better, but it can still be improved. However, even so it is fun to swing around with it and use it in combat.

It could surely stand its own ground in this looter-shooter genre, so long it does not falter under the annoyance of micro-transactions. It is still to be seen how this will work, but as of now I am predicting that one can use real money to boost progress in the game, by cutting down on timers and/or buying materials. During the beta, you had the option of buying materials with premium currency offered as a tester, or you could farm them by repeating certain tasks. With these materials it was then possible to craft items which could then be exchanged for a new character. This crafting has a 12 hour timer on it, which you can skip for some more premium currency. In essence this isn't as bad, because once you get the character you like, unlocking the others will not be that much of a priority, but could be something you'd do end-game. Nevertheless, I could see this becoming quite a chore, so we'll see where this goes. It is definitely not a bad game though, but it doesn't offer enough yet to stand out, apart from the graphics. At its core, it is still a looter-shooter.

Played on:

• GPU: ASUS ROG Strix 3090 (OC) - Nvidia Driver: 537.42
  
• CPU: Ryzen 9 5950X
  
• RAM: 32GB 3600 MT/s
  
• OS: Windows 10 (22H2) - Build: 19045.3448

[paulmalmsteen]

Publicado originalmente por Bertram235:

I'm already sure that special operations will become very boring very quickly, and that the community will just find way to breeze through all that with dot damage and the minimum of actions on their end.

They're already doing that, now, in Vespers resource defense. If you have one or two people playing as Bunny and running in circles spamming lightning emission, you can effortlessly breeze through the first few waves. Though, it is a pretty effective method for quickly leveling up your other descendants with little effort.

[Devilish Dave]

Publicado originalmente por paulmalmsteen:

Publicado originalmente por Bertram235:

I'm already sure that special operations will become very boring very quickly, and that the community will just find way to breeze through all that with dot damage and the minimum of actions on their end.

They're already doing that, now, in Vespers resource defense. If you have one or two people playing as Bunny and running in circles spamming lightning emission, you can effortlessly breeze through the first few waves. Though, it is a pretty effective method for quickly leveling up your other descendants with little effort.

This can be fixed if enemies come from multiple areas and the team must split instead of focusing in the same direction. Or if the spawn zones were vastly larger allowing the enemies to be more dispersed. Nevertheless, I think the latter would become more annoying and maybe even challenging depending on the type of enemy.

[paulmalmsteen]

Publicado originalmente por author:

This can be fixed if enemies come from multiple areas and the team must split instead of focusing in the same direction. Or if the spawn zones were vastly larger allowing the enemies to be more dispersed. Nevertheless, I think the latter would become more annoying and maybe even challenging depending on the type of enemy.

Agreed. I was kind of dumbfounded when I realized they were only coming from one direction, because it seemed obvious that it would get exploited. The only issue with enemies coming from multiple directions is that, since that map isn't very large, it's still pretty easy to take care of enemies from multiple sides because of how fast Bunny is. The problem is Bunny's ability to use speed of light and lightning emission at the same time.

Another fix for it would be including more difficult enemies during the early waves so that it's not as easy. You can get through a lot of waves with Bunny because very few difficult enemies spawn early on. Which is also why most new players are always caught by surprise when everything comes out at once after the first several waves.

It could also be fixed by simply making enemies really resistant to electricity and weak to fire instead, or something. If they were weak to water, then you'd have people playing as Valby and just spamming clean up. Skills that allow you to attack while also evading damage are the real problem in a small map like this, and Blair doesn't have them.

[Devilish Dave]

Publicado originalmente por paulmalmsteen:

Publicado originalmente por author:

This can be fixed if enemies come from multiple areas and the team must split instead of focusing in the same direction. Or if the spawn zones were vastly larger allowing the enemies to be more dispersed. Nevertheless, I think the latter would become more annoying and maybe even challenging depending on the type of enemy.

Agreed. I was kind of dumbfounded when I realized they were only coming from one direction, because it seemed obvious that it would get exploited. The only issue with enemies coming from multiple directions is that, since that map isn't very large, it's still pretty easy to take care of enemies from multiple sides because of how fast Bunny is. The problem is Bunny's ability to use speed of light and lightning emission at the same time.

Another fix for it would be including more difficult enemies during the early waves so that it's not as easy. You can get through a lot of waves with Bunny because very few difficult enemies spawn early on. Which is also why most new players are always caught by surprise when everything comes out at once after the first several waves.

It could also be fixed by simply making enemies really resistant to electricity and weak to fire instead, or something. If they were weak to water, then you'd have people playing as Valby and just spamming clean up. Skills that allow you to attack while also evading damage are the real problem in a small map like this, and Blair doesn't have them.

You're actually right, spawning electricity resistant enemies wouldn't be a bad idea.

[necrofuge9115]

The games pretty fun aside from Parkour missions, witch they should remove to be honest no offense just Roadblocks the storyline. Its a blend of Destiny and Warframe with rewarding upgrade Modules.

[Ruina]

Cons:
the drop chances are ridgged: if you have 3 of the 4 parts the more trys the less drop chance

(Nexus has a patent on it)

[Tesselator]

I dunno about others but the designers keep making the game-play worse and worse!!! First it was Bunny and the MASSIVELY oversized AOE plus the air grapple killing everything before anyone could get a shot off. Now it's poison covering the entire battlefield making all other team members completely useless and unnecessary.

This is really bad IMO. It removes any and all challenge from team activity in the game - or at least from the end-game. And what is it people do when there is nothing to do in the game? Uninstall is the answer I come up with. The only activity left to play are the mega-bosses (Titans) or whatever they're called, and how many times can people kill those before that becomes too boring to bare? For me the answer is about 3-5 times.

With nothing left to do for me and all the bosses defeated about 5 times or MORE, I bid this game goodbye. It WAS fun while it lasted but the fun was designed out of the game - so sad.

__
Maybe... If there were a way to select matchmaking options which would exclude the poison lady and the bunnies I would continue playing. Either that or nerf them back to something normal. It really is bad guys....